Taxes

A left-leaning policy group concerned about economic fairness has released a report card on various budget proposals – and, perhaps not surprisingly, the House GOP fiscal 2012 plan doesn’t fare so well.
In fact, Demos gives the budget largely fashioned by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc...

Hatred of taxes is not merely Republican policy. It is Republican theology. It goes back, in more or less current form, to 1978 and the right-wing populist uprising against property taxes in California led by the industrialist Howard Jarvis—the “Revolt of the Haves,” as the economics journalist...

What’s a budget gimmick? It’s a generic name for any kind of self-executing, automatic process that supposedly will achieve a predetermined budget goal if future Congresses fail to meet that goal. Sarah Babbage has an excellent rundown of the three possible budget gimmicks under...

Tax evasion will cost the U.S. government $305 billion in 2010 and has cost $3 trillion over the past decade. It is a major contributor to budget deficits and the accumulation of national debt since 2001. Tax evasion also costs state treasuries billions of dollars. Every tax filer will pay an extra...

Not everyone has an equal opportunity to cheat on his or her taxes. Employees who have income withheld have fewer options for tax evasion than people who are self-employed or have complex business or financial dealings. Likewise, large corporations with foreign subsidiaries and sophisticated...

Under current law, the top income tax rate applies to all earners making above $373,650—treating the merely affluent no different than the super rich. This doesn’t make sense. A couple making $400,000 a year in a major metro area is certainly very well-off, but they are not rich in the way of a CEO...

Any solution to the nation’s fiscal challenges will require tax increases, and tax increases on high earners in particular. When President Reagan enacted historic tax cuts in 1981, households in the top .01 percent made about 2.5 times more than those in the top 0.1 percent and eight times more...

Back in the 1950s, corporate income taxes made up 23 percent of federal revenues. Now that figure is under 8 percent. Put another way, corporate taxes were between 5 to 6 percent of GDP when Eisenhower was in office, but have since fallen to 2 percent today.
It is widely expected that reforms of...